For weeks I've been hearing, "Mom, can we go to the pumpkin patch?"
I've had to defer and explain it was still summer. Defer and point out the farm hasn't even opened yet. Defer and remind the kids we were busy with something else until lo and behold a date was finally set and promptly confirmed with accompanying cousins.
We miraculously and coincidentally woke to the first chill in the air since April and quickly nestled into experiencing one of our favorite annual fall traditions. I had my cup of coffee for the road. I got to gloat over my Type A sister that I arrived before her. The day was so crisp and beautiful, it literally couldn't have been better.
I quickly noticed it was much more crowded this year, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. We were at the pumpkin patch. We waited an entire year for this.
However, I found myself disassociating and frolicking in the middle of the provided sunflower field as one does when my husband exclaimed, "That one's as big as you." I was immediately struck back down to reality. Granted at 5'2", I didn't have that far to go, but I landed with such perfectly wonderful thoughts like, Soon the kids will be taller than me. They're going to be taller than these sunflowers.
Would I even be here if I didn't have kids?
I know my husband and I will still be a family unit once the kids are grown and flown, but will we continue to go to the pumpkin patch without them? Or is this strictly a kid-friendly family event? Would they even want to come with us when they're teenagers?
Right now outings like these still invoke assertions of being "the best day ever." In fact, my daughter stated she has had "the best day ever" three days in a row thus far, which by my count, never once was proffered to Mary Poppins.
Just saying.
We have several traditions throughout the four seasons, and it creates such beautiful rhythms to pass the year with. There's a sense of unity and surety to them. They provide anticipation and constancy, as if there's always a solid path for us to walk on together, hand in sticky hand, and the pumpkin patch is a time honored one indeed.
I delight in going, especially when a free pumpkin is included in the ticket.
It's like officially kicking off the autumn season. The leaves are beginning to fall. I can pick out the ugliest, wartiest, but p i n k e s t pumpkin I can find. I can eat tried and true delicacies I normally wouldn't like fried Oreos. Or even better, funnel cake with fried Oreos.
It's like being Templeton from Charlotte's Web—
"What eating! And what drinking! And everywhere good hiding and good hunting."
I can then come home and decorate the porch with each and every sacred, one-of-a-kind, super special pumpkin find that may or may not have a name. My suggestion of "Jack" was promptly sneered at by my son, and a far more supreme title was forthwith bestowed upon his rotundly orange gourd.
CoughSnowballcough.
It isn't until then, or perhaps even later in the following week if we're b l e s s e d, that we can then enter upon the event's titular denouement and argue over whether or not we'll carve or simply paint the pumpkins.
We will then carve the pumpkins like the kids wanted to and get disappointed watching them rot within two days' time. Then when they rot, what joy, we can and WILL get irritated at the idea of having to actually t o u c h decomposing pumpkins. Such lark! Consequently, we'll all be quick to roll our eyes but quietly agree with Dad's suggestion to merely leave the decomposing pumpkins where they perish.
"For the deer," he will affirm.
Then the deer will let nature take its ubiquitous course so that by this time next year, we can unite as the strong, virtuosic family unit we are and have a homeschool lesson on the not-quite-so-randomly-growing-as-previously-thought pumpkin vines in the back field.
Though next year things will be different. We'll all be a year older, and every year there seems to be something new or improved upon at this local farmstead.
"As they should," my sister stated as we both contentedly rested under the new tin-roofed pavilion. I loftily nodded my approval while watching the kids play in the corn pit, but don't be intimidated by my opinions in a business wholly unrelated to me. I am just like you, for I too will be finding those insufferable kernels everywhere in the house for the next 3- 4 months.
And yes, I agree. Change is good. At least change has the potential to be good. Especially when it comes in the form of new pine swings that enable me to sit in the shade. Even if it's with my toes barely touching.
But I'm a mom.
A short mom, but a mighty mom. A mighty mom, but an anxious mom who can't help but recognize that change can be like the anthropomorphic pumpkins painted onto charts to measure a yearly height growth by—
it's just another declaration that these pumpkin patch days won't last forever.
